high tech firefighters clothing

High Tech Fire-fighters Clothing

Ubaid Ur Rehman Eusuf [email protected]

Smarta Textilier och Högteknologiska KläderSmart Textiles and High-Tech Clothing


SUMMARY

Fire fighters work is exposed and can be grouped into the following

categories:

biological & chemical impacts

mechanical impacts

thermal impacts (heat, fire, steam)

radiation

Technological advances are happening in the heat and flame protective

clothing industry to reach the protection of fire fighters. These mentioned

topics are crucial to address the important issue of safety, protection from

life-threatening and disabling injuries, illnesses and specific protection.

Continuously changing demands have forced the industry to offer the

various better performing fibres, fabrics and products. Advancements in

new textiles material and manufacturing processes have created the

improved protective garments and enhanced its use and applications in

various fields besides the protective clothing.

This paper gives an overview of the major impacts that protective

firelighters’ clothing has to withstand. In this context, indispensable

properties of fabrics used to manufacture protective clothing are worked

out and an overview of materials currently used in the respective fields is

presented.

PROBLEM FORMULATION:

The working environment of today’s firefighters involves various risks.

Many home-furnishings and textiles, like clothing, curtains and home

textiles contain materials such as PES, PA6, PA66, etc.). If it comes to a

fire, fire fighters have to fight with many toxic gases and steam which is

unlike the fire from wood during the old times. Despite of the fact that

nowadays the firemen are equipped with modern PPE, still they have to

face certain life threatening problems which are being researched. The

main problem is that firemen themselves have to load with a handful of

life saving tools and gadget which limits their free movement or at least

provide hindrance by adding unwanted weight on them. Studies show that

2


the major cause of firemen casualties during fire operation is not the fire

itself, it’s their own body heat and high stress during the rescue operation.

Another major problem is lack of reliable two-way communication

equipment that arises due to unsuitable environment, and more often

interference in equipment is the source of interruption.

3


ANALYSIS OF DEMANDS FOR PROTECTION:

The woolen and cotton textiles currently in use by firefighters provide a

fine balance between thermal insulation and moisture management, but

these are just two of the key features without which a firefighter suit is

incomplete. The rest are less weight, water and fluid resistance, tear and

puncture resistance and external breathing apparatus and two-way

communication apparatus. The traditional woolen fabric can be equipped

with the modern gadgets but the major drawback is the high weight, which

outclasses its major benefit, secondly it has a major problem of

compatibility with the skin as it sometimes make it itchy to wear and

adversely affects the performance. There are several smart materials

instead that overcome this problem with the traditional material and also

provide added benefits.

PROPERTIES:

The basic requirement as mentioned earlier is to provide the firemen

insulation from the direct and indirect heat at a fire incident. Among other

characteristics required nowadays in a fire suit is the liquid resistance,

supplying enough air during the rescue operation, enabling firemen to

interact with the control center wirelessly, doing all this and more while

keeping the weight of the suit as low as possible, preferably under fifteen

kilogram. The later is the major challenge along with finding reliable way

of communication.

SOLUTION:

The modern firefighter suit is typically made up of three layers of

protection at least; outer-shell, a woven aramid fiber for abrasion and fire

protection; inner-liner, a non-woven aramid fiber for insulation from heat;

and a thin impermeable layer of moisture barrier between these two

layers which protects firefighters from water and blood-borne diseases.

Besides providing added insulation against heat and water, these advance

textile materials form a suit that is much lighter in weight compare to the

traditional materials.

4


It’s not just enough to have a good fire suit, besides a firefighter’s suit is

not complete without helmet, gloves, and the boots. These necessaries are

also made up of/or reinforced with smart textile materials in one way or

other. Even the cylinder of the SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus)

is contained in non-woven aramid fiber for insulation.

5


SPECIFIC SMART & HIGH-TECH MATERIALS:

THERMAL INSULATION:

Nowadays, for protective fibres lot of different kind of fibbers are used.

Nomex®, Kevlar® by DuPont and PBI are only the examples of wide range

of protection fibres on the market.

Limiting oxygen index (LOI, minimum concentration of oxygen, expressed

as a percentage; that will support combustion of a polymer) measures the

level of resistance of protective fibres and garments. The higher the LOI

the better will be the resistance to combustion. There are three classes of

heat protective fibres that can be defined:

Inherently flame resistant/flame retardant fibres: LOI 18.4 to

20.6, cotton, polyester, and viscose to improve the protection, they are

finished with flame retardant chemicals.

Heat-resistant fibres: LOI 25, Nomex® & Kevlar® by DuPont,

Conex® & Twaron® by Teijin.

Aramid fibres: Permanently flame retardant, do not melt or drip,

compose temperature 350-550°C, excellent dimensional stable.

Nomex on demand™ is the latest innovation made by DuPont. It is a

nonwoven fabric used for insulation as interlining. It unique characteristic

is that it gets thick when the temperature rises above 250oC trapping more

air for insulation while it remain thin at ordinary conditions and even after

getting thicker it doesn’t restricts mobility. The problem is that it doesn’t

go back to original position at normal conditions.

MOISTURE BARRIER SYSTEMS:

There are several companies which are producing moisture barrier

systems for protective clothing such as Gore-Tex® Nomex®, Gore-Tex®

AIRLOCK®, Sympa-Tex®.

When it comes to fabric construction, the fabric properties required are

dependent on the type of heat the fire fighter is exposed to work with.

When exposed to conductive heat, fabric density and thickness are of

major importance. The highest level of protection can be achieved by

incorporating an insulation air layer (Gore-Tex®AIRLOCK®) into the fabric

6


construction, as air shows the lowest thermal conductivity of all materials.

In this context, spacer fabrics, like the new technology from Nomex® On

Demand™ from DuPont are also a valuable solution. In order to increase

physiological comfort, materials such as Gore Tex®laminates form W.L.

GORE & ASSOCCIATES GmbH based on PTFE (polytetrafluorethylene) or

SympaTex® from the Sympatex Technologies GmbH company can be

used. Both of them are breathable, water- and windproof and help to

evaporate the moisture.

CURRENT PROJECTS:

WearIT@work:

The European Union project wearIT@work develops intelligent fire-brigade

clothing, which can convey information about special sensors and

communication connections about the personal condition of the task

forces as well as over the situation locally to the operations center. Project

owner is a German institute “Fraunhofer-Institut für Angewandte

Informationstechnik”. Over a helmet display the fire fighter receives

current status reports of the center and the other task forces, in order to

be able to consider these with the further procedure.

Goal of wearIT@work in fire fighting cloths:

The protective fire fighters clothing will be a combination of protection and

information.

A substantial application of the European Union project wearIT@work is

the intelligent protective clothing for task forces.

Integrated sensors will give information about the environment and the

condition of the fire fighter.

The Ad-hoc-network support flexible communication within the group and

with the outside leading-manager.

A display in the helmet can supply important information to the

employment and for navigation.

Special sensors help in case of emergency with the detection of fire

fighters, who are not able to save themselves any more.

Prototypes were shown on the CeBIT 2008

LUMITEX:

7


Soon, protection equipment should shine automatically. In darkness or in

close smoke, the protective suit of a fireman is no active light source, only

the helmet is fluorescent and the clothing is reflecting light. Until now,

protective clothing have normal reflectors from fluorescent material. The

EU-project LUMITEX reaches to the end of 2010 and the project partners

are: ITF Denkendorf, DITF Denkendorf with institute for textile chemistry,

Lefatex Chemie GmbH, Reimotec Maschinen und Anlagenbau GmbH, ITVP

Produktservice GmbH, Mattes & Ammann KG and Color-Textil Veredelung

GmbH. The idea of the LUMITEX EU-project is, that modern protective

clothing for fire fighters should shine itself in the night and should help the

firemen to orientate during fire operations. The new idea of LUMITEX

includes electroluminescence properties. Electroluminescence is a physical

effect. It can be explained with the reversal of a solar cell, and if an

electrical voltage is applied to such a device, it can lead to sending of

light. Such a device consists of three different layers - a transparent

conductive one, a non-conductive (dielectric) one and of another

electrically conductive layer. After putting all three together you get a kind

of parallel plate type capacitor, which can produce light if voltage is

applied.

SENS-ProCLOTH:

Sense-Pro-Cloth is a project which is sponsored by the BMBF Germany

(Federal ministry of education and research) and takes place between

01th July 2008 and 30th Juni 2011. Project partners are fire brigade

Stuttgart, fire brigade Nürnberg, Institut für Textil und Verfahrens-technik

Denkendorf (ITV) der Deutschen Instituten für Textil- und Faserforschung

DITF, Fraunhofer-Institut für Integrierte Schaltungen (IIS), MSA Auer GmbH,

S-Gard Berufs- und Schutzkleidung Hubert Schmitz GmbH & Co. KG, Josef

Kanz GmbH & Co. KG, Medizin- und Informationstechnik AG, W.

Zimmermann GmbH & Co. KG and Bijo-Data Informations systeme GmbH

in Germany. Contents of SensProCloth are the development of “sensory

protective clothing integrated into the system for fire-brigade and disaster

control”. Protective clothing do not only keep dangers away, they also

changed the personal perception and feeling of the environment, and that

8


can be a risk. Without measuring instruments, damaging influences at the

fire operation place cannot be estimated easily. Sense-Pro-Cloth wants to

combine the protective effect of the fire clothing with the measurement of

the environment parameters such as temperature or dangerous materials.

Through an included integrated detection and communication system in

the protective clothing, the loss of perception should become balanced.

With the idea of Sense-Pro-Cloth, temperature, hazardous substances,

physiological aspects like pulse, breathing frequency and perspiration can

be measured with sensors. In the future the protective clothing of fire

fighters will learn to think and feel.

9


REFERENCES:

1. Holmes,

D.A., 2000, Textiles for survival, in Horrocks, A.R.; Anands, S.C. Handbook

of Technical Textiles. Woodhead Publishing.

2. Janet

Bealer Rodie, Demand-Activated FR: Smart Fiber Technology,

Textileworld.com, Jan’10.

3. Marek

Mejssner, 2008, Smart Textiles, http://www.warsawvoice.pl/view/18973,

Jan’10.

4. Stephan

ie Youker, How to Make Fire Retardant Clothes Safe and Comfortable,

worldfiredepartments.com/fire clothing, Feb’10.

5. Hayden

Brown, Feb’05, Firefighter Turnout Coat Configurations: Performance

Data for Acquisition Decisions, National Institute of Standards and

Technology.

URL: www.bfrl.nist.gov.

6. Nikola

Schwaiger, Challenges & properties in the protective garments for fire

fighters, Dec’09.

7. www.cit

y.davis.ca.us/fire/pct, Feb’10

8. www.ex

ploretextiles.ca/textiles/sco_firefighter_e.aspx , Dec’09

9. www.sy

mpatex.com/technologien/membran_und_laminate/

aufbau_und_funktion_der_membran, Dec’09 [Moisture barrier]

10. www2.dupont.com/Personal_Protection/en_US/assets/

downloads/nomex/ NomexDemandRev3.wmv, Jan’10 [Nomex on demand

video]

10

high tech firefighters clothing

Documents